Watch the latest episode of our exclusive interview between actor and comedian John Cleese and private investigator turned whistleblower Daniel “Danno” Hanks.
Danno recently hit the news for coming clean about targeting Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for the tabloids, and in our exclusive new interview series goes into detail about some of his most high profile targets, including John Cleese himself!
In this episode, Danno tells John how he provided tabloids such as the Daily Mail the illegal “keys to the kingdom” for their journalists to utilise for unlawful means, such as “blagging”.
TRANSCRIPT
John Cleese: Hello. I’ve got Danno with me again to talk about the work he did finding information, some of it illegal for the British tabloids. First of all, tell me about databases.
Danno Hanks: Back in the early eighties, there were several companies. One of them was called Nexis Lexis. And then there was ChoicePoint. But the most efficient one is one called TLO, The TLO stood for ‘The Last One’. But then, as they developed, they would gather more and more information, private information on people. And there were no rules. There were no laws saying who you could give that to. Then suddenly the federal government started realising, “Well, you guys are selling private information.” And they passed a law called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. But they left an opening and the opening was private investigators. Private investigators and law enforcement could get whatever they wanted. The news media could get limited access. Well, as a private investigator, I could get complete access, but then sell it to the news media illegally. I had no idea that they were going to use the data illegally to pose as you. To pretend to be you. And steal your identity.
JC: I noticed, for example, at one point somebody wanted my social security number and I thought, “Well, what are they going to do with it?” But they do what in England we call “blagging”. They then ring up pretending to be me and asking a banker or some medical person for confidential information, which they then give because they think they are giving it to me.
DH: In the United States, we have a law that protects all medical information. It’s a felony to obtain it illegally.
JC: Yeah, we have one too. I’m particularly interested in the UK. I mean, the papers would ring you up and say, “Get me something on X”?
DH: Well, basically they they didn’t want me to get specific information. They wanted me to give them the identifiers that allowed their people to get that do that ‘blagging’.
JC: So the blagging was was a separate operation that was started off by the information you gave them?
DH: Right. I would give them the information of what we would refer to as the keys to the kingdom. Then they could pretend to be you and get everything about you.
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